Rep Boucher Moving Forward On Privacy Legislation

Privacy legislation aiming to protect consumers online will be introduced early next Congress House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-VA) said.

"We want to make sure that electronic commerce is enhanced by giving to consumers' privacy protections that they don't have today," Rep Boucher said. The measure, currently in draft form, seeks to inform consumers about what personal information is collected by websites, how it is used, and empower Internet users to control that information. To that end, the proposed bill will encourage websites to adopt the following policies: make a user's preference profile available to him or her; allow the user to modify their profile; and allow the user, with one click, to opt-out of having most of their information collected. Some information, such as the type of a web browser an Internet user has, is needed by websites in order for them to function. One of the goals of the planned bill is to stop websites from selling consumer information to third parties without the consumer's knowledge about it.